SAN ANTONIO — Eight vehicles have been stolen from the Fiesta Texas parking lot since January and now some of them have been found by Border Patrol agents two hours south of San Antonio, but still in Texas.
Fiesta Texas said that they had nothing new to say since KENS 5 first aired a story about the stolen vehicles during Spring Break. They said that they have zero tolerance for unlawful behavior but still won't say whether or not they have surveillance cameras in the parking lot.
Two weeks ago, Julie Thomas took her four boys to Fiesta Texas over Spring Break for some fun, but her day quickly took a turn for the worse when she came out to the parking lot to discover her truck missing. Just last week, Thomas found out that Del Rio Border Patrol agents found her vehicle 100 miles south of San Antonio in the town of Catarina.
"It is nasty, it is dirty,” Thomas said of her truck after it was returned to her. “I don't know what they did in the truck. There's caked mud everywhere.”
Del Rio Border Patrol says that an agent was making a routine stop when the driver took off. They recovered the truck but never found the driver.
"I'm stuck with not knowing what's wrong with the truck. I'm going to have a depreciation of value. I'm going to get a truck back that may crap out on me in the next few days for all I know," said Thomas, who added that her truck has 10,000 extra miles on it even though it was found just 100 miles away.
The vehicle thefts go back even further. In January, Fiesta Texas season pass holder Holly Granger had her van stolen. It was taken from the parking lot and recovered two weeks later by Cotulla Border Patrol in Valley Wells, Texas, not far from Catarina.
Granger says that she hasn't been able to go back to Fiesta Texas since the incident.
"Their security is there for their purposes, to make sure their stuff is safe, so it's not really there to protect the customers, which is a false sense of security because you see all these security guards there but yet vehicles are still getting broken into, vehicles are getting stolen, and the people who spend a lot of money there every year are not being protected," Granger said.
Cotulla Border Patrol said that Granger's van is a vehicle commonly used by smugglers in the area. They attempted to stop the driver of the van to do an immigration inspection but the driver took off. The agent was able to track down several passengers from the van and arrested them.
Granger didn't have insurance on the van and the vehicle is a total loss.
Laredo Border Patrol Division Chief Greg Burwell says he's seeing a trend of stolen vehicles coming from San Antonio, mostly trucks and vans, and heading to the border area and being used in smuggling operations. He encourages anyone who sees suspicious activities to call them at 1-800-343-1994.
Holly Granger is organizing a class-action lawsuit against Fiesta Texas for damages with others who have had their vehicles stolen from the parking lot.